To understand Canada, it is best to think of a middle-class person who crows on Facebook and Insta about their “perfect” life: secure public sector Lazy Girl job with a snazzy title, house filled with HomeSense knickknacks, Ikea furniture, and pantry stocked with Costco food, and a bland and compliant spouse with some prestige and more money who gets gushed over because the neighborhood sees that spouse as a Very Important Person™.

The smug narrative in every social media entry is the same: Middle-Class Person™ who Never Makes a Mistake™ has Won at Life™.

And then one day, the Very Important Person™ snaps and turns on them in public with ominous threats and divorce papers.

Middle-Class Person™ hitched their ride and narrative on a single person who gloriously turned on them and now, in front of the entire Global Village™, has outlined what a freeloader Middle-Class Person™ always was, how annoying, and now the Very Important Person™ wants their pound of flesh.

What is a sheltered Middle-Class Person™ to do? What a tintinnabulation!

Well, Middle-Class Person™ can’t admit flaw because that violates the Never Makes a Mistake™ narrative. Their fortunes entirely rested on being linked to the Very Important Person™ both publicly and financially; so now a replacement is needed to maintain the Won At Life™ façade.

Façade is the appropriate word here because in order to maintain that whole Won At Life™ “mystique” (we are talking about the Middle-Class Person™, after all), there were a few minor details hidden like the credit card debt, a second mortgage, a gig job, and no Plan B™ should the Public Sector Job™ disappear because it hinged on staying coupled with the Very Important Person™, who is, in fact, a slimeball with some sketchy friends and even sketchier hobbies.

The Dream Life™ rested on a house of cards, and everything hinged on keeping on the good side of the Very Important Person™ you gushed over in public for years…and yet, somehow, all that gushing had no currency with them. Perhaps it never did.

Suddenly, this is a war on multiple fronts between the Middle-Class Person™ and the Very Important Person™.

What should be clear at this stage is that neither Middle-Class Person™ nor Very Important Person™ are remotely what they proclaim to be. Middle-Class Person™ was always broke, and Very Important Person™ was a poseur with fading clout, but both bought their own hype, and their solutions will always make the assumption that the label fits the goods.

But there is panic on both sides of this war: Very Important Person™ broke away and wants to squeeze the assets of Middle-Class Person™ because the truth is the money isn’t there and the clout is rapidly waning because one of the previously struggling neighbors in the Global Village™ is now steadily gaining clout and respect (China, we are talking about you). The easiest mark to raid is the Middle-Class Person™.

Middle-Class Person™, on the other hand, has lost face and is angry because their Won At Life™ plan backfired. You can’t be smug when your meal ticket calls you a freeloader in public and starts demanding you pay up. Sure, the exploitation was always a two-way street, but the Very Important Person™, the one Middle-Class Person™ spent years building up, said it first.

Both want revenge against the other. Both want Complete and Total Victory™ in the war. Both will lose in spectacularly different ways because panic is never a good way to make decisions.

For the Very Important Person™, taking undeserved resources from Middle-Class Person™ in order to break them, not alienates the shakedown artist, but backfires and erosion of clout intensifies. The mean-spirited and greedy miscalculation has its steep price and a lot of reputational damage. Demanding chump change from Middle-Class Person™ reeks of desperation and it sends the Very Important Person™ into a tailspin: they can’t walk back on their meatheaded ideas or hard-ass image: so worse decisions are made in rapid succession to try to salvage the public-facing theater. Very Important Person™ becomes a Washed-Up Has-Been™. Ouch.

However, for the Middle-Class Person™, their desperation is no less destructive. They are also willfully tethered to their image, and now they need to find someone who can help them Save Face™ because Elbows Up™ and I Can Do Better Without You™ isn’t helping on the financial front. There are bills to pay to maintain the lifestyle. You can’t show off how generous you are if you have nothing to give. You can’t hold on to that Lazy Girl Public Sector Job™ because it was entirely funded by having a relationship with that Very Important Person™ that you no longer have.

Middle-Class Person™ can’t walk back, either, but unlike Very Important Person™, the neighbors don’t hate them, but pity them.

And see a use for them.

But panic blinds and you don’t think you have time for a long game. Everything has to be solved now.

What to do?

Find someone who tells you what you want to hear and hitch your ride on them, naturally. You are Middle-Class Person™, after all, not Very Important Person™.

And someone enters the picture, giving you that very promise.

All your problems can vanish. Middle-Class Person™ tells themselves they are still Winning At Life™ because, technically, they “won” the last round, even if half the guests at the party were already edging toward the exits.

Sure, the Savior In Waiting™ has no track record with the neighbors, but he Says The Right Things™, once ran the money vault for the Very Important People™, and seems more presentable than the Very Important Person™.

By hook or by crook.

They can hook you up to another set of Very Important People™ who can maintain the lifestyle, as improbable as it is. The house of cards? Savior in Waiting™ can Take Care of It™.

Just keep the faith and Everything Will Work Out in the End™.

Middle-Class Person™ doesn’t see another option. The Other Guy™ knows a few parlor tricks, but he isn’t Leadership Material™ because Savior In Waiting™ makes short work out of him and he never saw it coming.

Or maybe he did, but didn’t have a plan that would work. Or the currency. He could work a crowd of Little People™, but Middle-Class Person™ looks down on them and heaven forbid for anyone to have anything to do with the Great Unwashed.

Savior in Waiting™ seems magical: the right job, the right reputation, the right speeches in the right places, the right positive press (long ago paid for and co-opted, but that’s just a minor detail), the right deals, and the ability to shore up resources by any means necessary.

So long as the Won At Life™ façade still holds together, we can ignore the truth about making a deal with a weasel looking after a chicken coop.

Because to the Middle-Class Person™, it is not whether you win or lose. It is not about how you play the game. It’s about shallow public validation of following some made-up rules and looking respectable…and that’s about it. Let someone else worry about the details: you’re too busy populating your socials with something you can curate and spin to make the Global Village™ jealous of you. That’s good enough.